


Don't Join

by APiet (GingerJedi)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: I like nu!canon but I also like squeezing the bits of legends I like in here, I miss Karrde and all his crew, Rey Skywalker, canon mashing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-24 09:47:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15628068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GingerJedi/pseuds/APiet
Summary: Going in to The Last Jedi, I thought DJ was going to be a Talon Karrde type character. Once I saw it, I found I was reminded much more of another Legends character. Here's what came out of that thought...





	Don't Join

**Author's Note:**

> Going in to The Last Jedi, I thought DJ was going to be a Talon Karrde type character. Once I saw it, I found I was reminded much more of another Legends character. Here's what came out of that thought...
> 
> Dipping briefly back into fanfic after a lengthy hiatus, I really just wanted to get this idea off my chest. It's not my best work but I hope some of you enjoy it anyway.
> 
> Nb: I really enjoyed TLJ and am happy for Lucasfilm to tell their own story without reference to Legends. This is not a 'this is how it should have been' story. This is a bit of fun, because I still love certain parts of Legends and it's fun to find a way to squeeze them into nu!canon. Also, this uses some fairly obvious fan theories to make it work, apologies for the lack of originality!

“Don’t join,” he said, cool blue eyes watching the planet of Chibias fall away beneath us, “is a fundamental principle of this organization. Getting embroiled in the Empire or the Rebellion only leads to trouble, as you have just learned. Just look what happened to Jabba the Hutt.”

At that point I had no idea what had happened to Jabba, I was too green and too new to all this, but I was nervous and so nodded along anyway.

“Maintaining our neutrality and not getting involved is key to our growth and success as an organization. And believe me, we are growing, rapidly. It’s a good time to become part of our team.” He turned his calculating gaze to me. “I know it can be easy to accidentally disturb things you shouldn’t when ‘practising’ your slicing, Mr. Ghent. I hope you will be more careful now you are in my employ.”

“Y-y-y-yes, Mr. Karrde,” I nodded vigorously. I knew I had lucked-out to be picked up by him; I might be new to the fringe but I’d done my research and knew that not only was his organization on the up, but he also had a good reputation for treating his people well. Not that you’d have thought it from his behavior. I’ve heard Talon Karrde be described as a pretty cold fish, and that’s certainly how he seems if you don’t know him well. And it’s very hard to get to know him well, y’know? I’m still not sure I ever completely did.

“Good,” he said, neutrally, but apparently satisfied that that ground rule had been established. “Now, tell me about that woman who got you out of that little situation down on Chibias.”

And of course I did. I was hardly going to sour my whole new life by holding out on him, even though I kinda owed the strange woman for getting me out of a huge heap of trouble. So I told him the gist of what had happened, and of course he followed up with various questions. He was fascinated by her from the start, like a code he really wanted to slice, just for the sake of it.

I didn’t tell him about the lightsaber though. Not really sure why. Just a betrayal too far I guess. I wasn’t good at the ‘don’t join’ thing back then. Mara was always my soft spot.

Of course I didn’t really expect to see her again, so it was a big surprise when she turned up as a new recruit a few years later. I still don’t know if Karrde had deliberately gone out to find her like he had with me (he was always on the look out for new talent) and I’m not sure whether he put two and two together at that point and worked out she was the same woman. Mara didn’t actually acknowledge our prior acquaintance as such, but she was always kind to me; for some reason she generally spared me her blunt and sometimes harsh manner. But I guess I must have given away that I knew her in some way; I wasn’t good at keeping my mouth shut in those days. And Karrde, he was collected every slither of information about her that he could, in that cold calculating way of his. And she let nothing slip and yet let everything slip, in how she acted, in her sheer skill at everything she turned her hand too. She rose quick in the organization, and it was obvious she was the boss’ favourite. But no one really complained, because how could you when someone gets those kinds of results?

And so that’s the dance that was being played, her about to step into a senior position, when he turned up.

I dunno, in all my years one thing I’ve learned (well, that and don’t join) is that when a Skywalker turns up, everything goes to hell. Steer well clear of them. Just look at what happened to Jabba.

And to hell it did, whole organization ended up having to pick up sticks and run with Grand Admiral Thrawn hot on our tails. Karrde lost his beloved home. And Mara… Mara was never quite the same again. That’s where it all started, I guess.

And you know, it was a good thing for her at first, I guess? This whole weird dance she and Skywalker played. It did a hell of a lot of damage to the organization, and Karrde got forced into abandoning his ‘don’t join’ rule. Mara got hurt – really hurt – in the Katana fleet battle.

I’m gonna be honest with you here – I was barely out of my teens back then and had a major crush on her at first. It was hard not to be in awe of her skill, but to be fair while most of our colleagues back then respected her, they didn’t really like her as such. While always professional, she was a walking ball of repressed rage. Not that we understood why then. But she was always kind to me, y’know? And she’d saved my ass back on Chibias and basically I owed her my whole new cushy life where I got paid to do what I enjoyed. So of course that made for a bit of a crush back then. I might have lived in my own little world, but I had no delusions I’d ever have a chance with her. So I sat in that med centre for months after the Katana battle. It just seemed right to be there, make sure she was okay. And anyway I could take my work anywhere, all I needed was a datapad and a connection.

And the point is, the point is that I got real loyal to her. Like I say, I wasn’t good at the ‘don’t join’ thing back then, any better than Karrde was. Only my specific flaw was I got too attached to the people I worked with. Mara mainly, but through her, Karrde too, and of course all the rest. You work together long enough, go through enough stuff together, you become family. Karrde always called us ‘associates’ which suggests a kind of distance, but when you worked for him long enough you learned to hear that word as ‘family’. Karrde would never desert his associates – just look at how he ran off after Mara to deal with Thrawn’s clones. And we all learned the same thing from him. 

Like any family, inevitably eventually parts of it fall in love and go off and get married and all the rest. Karrde was always surprisingly at peace with that. He was a realist and didn’t expect people to go against their nature. So when Mara eventually but inevitably went off with Skywalker, he was happy for her. She might have left, but she’d always be family.

I don’t exactly know why she didn’t become a Jedi at that point. She obviously had that whole Force thing going on, and Skywalker surely must have wanted her to. Maybe she’d just learnt the ‘don’t join’ thing better that us. She knew the history of the Jedi, she must have known the risks. And she was right, wasn’t she?

Anyway, as a goodbye present Karrde helped her set up her own shipping business and go straight, as a Jedi’s spouse could hardly be a smuggler. It worked well for them; they’d travel round the galaxy with Skywalker seeking out knowledge of Jedi history or somesuch (he got me to help slice some ancient files NRI couldn’t, that was a really interesting job) and her combining that with finding rare products to bring back and sell in the core. They’d drop in to visit sometimes; Mara still fed Karrde useful information from round the galaxy and he’d return the favour in relation to their interests. I think they were pretty happy for a while, y’know? At peace with each other and the galaxy. The New Republic flourished, the Empire seemed like a distant memory, and everything was at peace. Don’t join was no longer a concern; there was (it seemed) only one game in town.

Eventually they had a kid. Not my kinda thing, but she was cute and they doted on her. Some people thought it weird to bring up a kid travelling round the galaxy on a traders ship, but why not? It was pretty adorable, actually, the way Mara would sit at the Fire’s controls with a toddler on her lap, showing her the controls. Kid was learning to fly before she could walk.

But then they abruptly changed tack and Skywalker decided to finally set up this Jedi Academy.

I never really untangled what it was all about, but from what I got from Karrde it was something to do with Ben Solo – he needed training. And Skywalker had met a bunch of other people with a talent for the Force over the years who wanted to be taught. So I guess he finally gave in to the inevitable pressure and decided it was time to restart the Jedi Order.

I visited a few times with Karrde – Skywalker wanted to keep the location of the place low key so he set up a deal with Karrde for regular supply runs. Karrde often came along on them himself just to catch up with Mara and her kid, and I would tag along too. It became obvious pretty quickly that all was not well. Mara was one of the students, but it was obvious she wasn’t happy with something there, although the most I ever got was her swearing something about ‘Skywalker family drama’. If only we’d known.

It lasted a couple of years before it all fell down, and we turned up just in time for the aftermath. I still remember the moment when we saw flames on the horizon; the acrid taste of fire and flame when we walked down the ramp. Everything in flames, many of the buildings simply collapsed under the force of… something. Like pure rage had been unleashed. The hazy sound of Karrde directing us to grab breathing equipment, coming through to the rest of the crew to bring out firefighting equipment. Pulling on the breathing mask and then venturing out into the smoke and flame, squinting through it all at something on the ground and realizing – a body. Stumbling forward, and then another, and another. All familiar faces, Skywalker’s students. No blood… had the heat burned it away? Karrde crouched expertly beside one of them, then stood and grimly stated “Lightsabers.” But where was Mara? Panic gripping me, and I could see it there in Karrde’s face as well, his cool blue eyes turned red in the reflection of the flames.

We continued on our grim search, finding bodies, checking them. No Skywalker, no Ben Solo, but also no Mara, no small child struck down beside her. The crew brought out fire fighting equipment, smothered the flames with foam. It made it harder to search. The smoke from the extinguished flames made it hard to see. Karrde ushered forward his scanning teams, fighting through the smoke to get to the collapsed buildings, to start searching for anything – anyone – that might still be alive under there.

It was on the third day of searching and excavating we pulled them out. Like all the bodies we found before them, they seemed broken, the both of them. Mara huddled around that tiny girl’s form. But the sensors told us there was still a spark of life still in there. Karrde stood beside them, forlorn, as the medics and med droids rushed in, got them of life support and hoverstretchers and got them back to the Wild Karrde. Somehow, they lived.

There was no sign of Luke Skywalker or Ben Solo.

It took months before they woke. Karrde was angry, so angry. Right from the start, even though we didn’t know what had happened, he blamed Skywalker. He was right to. We didn’t take them to his sister on Hosnian Prime – Karrde said it was too dangerous to until we knew more about what had happened. But I think he just didn’t trust them with Mara and her daughter. The New Republic was a mess right then, with Leia Organa recently publically shamed and people he didn’t trust running the show. For the first time in years he muttered about this was why you don’t join. He’d been right from the start.

Once again I found myself sitting in a med centre, watching over her, this time her and her kid, in bacta bags. Machines breathed for them for months while the damage the fire and smoke and falling stone was repaired. I don’t like to think about how broken they were when we found them, but we fixed them. Eventually it Mara was well enough to reduce the meds and wake her up.

Of course she asked for Skywalker as soon as she woke. Karrde had to gently tell her that as far as they could tell, Luke was dead. Karrde had been busy in those months, trying to find any information he could, and sign of Skywalker or Ben Solo out in the Galaxy. He’d found nothing. Only rumours of a new dark side user, working with the First Order.

Mara just shook her head, saying it wasn’t true. “Luke can’t be dead – I’d know,” she said, over and over again. As she recovered, she told us more of what she knew of what had happened at the Academy. Ben Solo and Skywalker had clashed, again and again, and Skywalker feared his nephew was turning to the dark side. That night she had been woken by some kind of shockwave in the Force and Luke gone from their room, her daughter woken by the same and crying in terror. She’d gone to comfort her – and then the roof caved in under some kind of Force blast. It was the last thing she remembered.

A week or so later her kid was well enough to be woken. But she was dazed, bereft, in some kind of shock or something, barely speaking.  
Mara insisted that we needed to find Skywalker, a task that became more urgent as news started to come in of this new dark side user, Kylo Ren, and his Knights of Ren. They were tracking down known Force users and forcing them to either work for them, or killing them. Mara was convinced it was Ben Solo. There was no evidence, but… it seemed likely. That’s when Karrde contacted Organa Solo and told them what had happened at the Academy.

He didn’t tell her everything though. He didn’t tell her that Mara and her niece were still alive. With what Kylo Ren was doing, we wanted there to be no chance of that information leaking out.

Rumours sneaked out anyway. I guess we’ll never know how exactly – there’s always someone willing to sell to the highest bidder. First we knew of it was when Knights of Ren started catching up with some of Karrde’s associates and squeezing them for information. Our people – our family – starting disappearing, one by one. And that’s why you don’t join. It always catches up with you in the end.

Mara thought Luke might have gone off to find some ancient Jedi temple he had learnt about years ago. Why he’d do that at a time like this, I didn’t get. Some weird Jedi stuff I guess. She wanted to go and search for him, but was terrified that Ren would find her daughter, whether she took her with her or left her behind. Karrde and all his people were a mark now. They came up with a plan. Decided to hide her.

Karrde’s people had scattered to all the corners of the galaxy at this point, both to hide and to search for information about our wayward Jedi. I was one of the few of his core team left with him, mainly because I’d never exactly picked up the kind of skills needed to go off on my own like that. So I was part of this mission. They wanted there to be no connection to Mara or Karrde. They disguised themselves as junkers – drunken gamblers who cared for nothing except the next drink. I watched them, from a distance, as they faked gambling and loosing badly to this gross local junker on this backwater planet, till finally they lost so badly and so drunkenly they handed over what they claimed to be their own daughter to him ‘to pay off their gambling and drinking debts’. I still remember the girls screams as his fat hand took hers and led her away, screaming for her parents to come back. Even though Mara had told her again and again that they would come back for her. The poor girl was too young to understand what was going on.

They hadn’t just chosen that backwater planet and Unkar Plutt for no reason though. The gambling match was for show; Plutt owed Karrde big time, and he was supposed to keep a lose eye on the girl, make sure she was okay and got fed. More than that, Jakku was home to an old friend of Mara’s from her travels with Skywalker, a Force worshipper who lived in a commune the other side of the planet, who they set to watch over her.

Then we went our separate ways; Mara on her search for Skywalker, Karrde and me on our search for information.

Only of course eventually Kylo Ren tracked us down. It’s hard to hide from a Force user, and Ben Solo had known us since he was a small child. He didn’t hesitate though, when he stood in front of Karrde in that weird helmet of his. Karrde didn’t flinch; finally backed against a wall, he didn't tell Ren and thing and just stood and took his fate. 

I knew because I was hid behind a rock nearby. I saw it all. All I could think as I saw my boss – my friend, who’d given me everything I had in this life – cut down was he should have listened to his own advice. Don’t join. 

I don’t know why Ren didn’t find me and kill me then. Maybe he just didn’t care, I just wasn’t that important, now Karrde had been dispatched. I slunk away into the dark, having finally learned my lesson. Don’t join.

I never heard from Mara again. With Karrde’s organization dismantled from top to bottom, all the routes of communication we’d set up evaporated. She just disappeared off into the galaxy, looking for her lost love. I tried to find her using my slicing skills, but pretty soon gave up. What was the point? What did you get for joining? Dead. All those Jedi apprentices? Dead. Karrde and his associates? Dead. Han Solo? Dead. Hosnian Prime? Blown away, and everyone with it. The New Republic? Dead. The peace was a myth and a lie. Don’t Join. It will always fall apart, and you’ll find yourself on the wrong side of the fence.

So I’ve been wandering the galaxy, keeping a low profile, as the galaxy goes to shavitt again. Making a buck here and there, to stay alive. Using the skills Karrde taught me to get by – a master codebreaker like me can palm a ship to get him anywhere and then dump it just as quick to pick up another one. Don’t get too flashy though, make sure everyone just thinks you’re a socially awkward drunken bum. Steal from both sides; they’re no different in the end. Attract too much attention? Get yourself dumped in the drunk tank for the night and be quickly forgotten. Too low for anyone to care about, to try to track down. Safe. Out of it all. Don’t join.

So now I’m lying here, boots round my neck, pretending to be sleeping off the previous night in this cell, and listening to these two kids. They’re in so much trouble. They haven’t learnt yet. Don’t join. Fine by me – they’ll be easy to make a few bucks out of, get me off this sordid planet. Run to the next one and keep on running. Don’t Join.

**Author's Note:**

> Some things have been left deliberately ambiguous in here because Ghent wouldn't have known, but feel free to ask if you really want to know :)
> 
> If you're curious about how this would fit into the two canons, I've made an assumption that some version of the Thrawn campaign happened at about the same time, and then things diverged after that. Hence Ghent never leaves Karrde to join NRI, conveniently leaving him where I wanted him in the story ;)


End file.
